Chapter XVI: Part 16

_C. I. L._ i. 41 = vi. 475 and i. 630 = vi. 565. The older one is
attributed by Mommsen to the consul P. Cornelius of B.C. 236: ‘P.
Corn[elios] L. f. coso[l] prob[avit] Mar[te sacrom].’ The other,
‘Quirino L. Aimilius L. f. praitor,’ must be set down to an Aemilius
praetor in 204, 191, or 190. The inference is that Mars became known
as Quirinus in that spot at the end of the third century B.C. It is
worth noting that the legendary smith, Mamurius, had a statue on the
Quirinal (Jord. _Top._ ii. 125).

Footnote 1454:

This is much what Dion. Hal. 2. 48 says was one view held in his time:
οὐκ ἔχοντας εἰπεῖν τὸ ἀκριβὲς εἴτε Ἄρης ἐστὶν εἴτε ἕτερός τις ὁμοίας
Ἄρει τιμὰς ἔχων.

Footnote 1455:

See on Jan. 9. Fest. 254.

Footnote 1456:

Gilbert, i. 283, points out that in the Argean itinerary (Jord. _Top._
ii. 237 foll.) one of the _divisions_ of the Quirinal bears the name,
and infers the gradual spread of the cult of Quirinus over the whole
hill; but he insists that it was introduced from the Palatine. The
general result of his wild but ingenious combinations is to infer a
religious conquest of the Quirinal from the Palatine.

Footnote 1457:

Aust, op. cit. pp. 11 and 33. Mommsen, _C. I. L._ i. 310, takes the
one of unknown date as the older.

Footnote 1458:

Aust, op. cit. 51, where for Liv. 4. 21 read Liv. 5. 40.

Footnote 1459:

Preller, i. 356.

Footnote 1460:

_Q. R._ 46; Ennius ap. Nonium 120; Gell. 13. 23.

Footnote 1461:

Plin. _H. N._ 15. 120.

Footnote 1462:

i. 373.

Footnote 1463:

See under April 25, Aug. 21, Dec. 23. Marq. 335; Schwegler, i. 334.

Footnote 1464:

Liv. 5. 40, 7 and 8.

Footnote 1465:

_L. L._ 6. 13. According to Macrob. (1. 13. 15) the five last days of
February were added after the intercalation, in order that March might
follow on Feb., and not on the intercalated days.

Footnote 1466:

_H. N._ 18. 8. See above, p. 304.

Footnote 1467:

_Fasti_, 2. 643 foll.

Footnote 1468:

Te duo diversa domini pro parte coronant,
Binaque serta tibi binaque liba ferunt.

Footnote 1469:

This must be a son of the family. We have, therefore, in this charming
picture the predecessors of the Rex, the Regina sacrorum, the
flamines, and the Vestal Virgins.

Stat puer et manibus lata canistra tenet.
Inde ubi ter fruges medios immisit in ignes,
Porrigit incisos filia parva favos.

De-Marchi, p. 231, gives a cut of a painting at Herculaneum which may
represent a scene of this kind.

Footnote 1470:

_Gromatici veteres_, i. 141. See Rudorff in vol. ii. 236 for an
interesting discussion of the religio terminorum and its ethical and
legal results.

Footnote 1471:

Rudorff, l. c. 237.

Footnote 1472:

Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 149.

Footnote 1473:

Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 187 foll.

Footnote 1474:

See under September, p. 229 foll. I may here notice the very curious
‘oraculum’ in _Grom. Vet._ p. 350 (ex libris Vegoiae) which connects
Jupiter with the introduction of termini in Etruria.

Footnote 1475:

Ζεὺς ὅπιος he is called by Dion. Hal. (2. 74), where the cult is
ascribed to Numa. Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ i. 159.

Footnote 1476:

Aust, in _Myth. Lex._ s. v. Iuppiter, 668.

Footnote 1477:

_Fasti_, 2. 667; Liv. 1. 55; Serv. _Aen._ 9. 448. Augustine, _C. D._
4. 23, adds Mars, and Dion. Hal. 3. 69 Iuventus to Terminus, who could
not be ‘exauguratus.’

Footnote 1478:

Serv. _Aen._ 9. 448 ‘Unde in Capitolio prona pars tecti patet, quae
lapidem ipsum Termini spectat.’ This is the ‘Capitoli immobile saxum’
of Virgil; see above, p. 230.

Footnote 1479:

Ovid, l. c. 671.

Footnote 1480:

See above, p. 140. Varro, _L. L._ 5. 66.

Footnote 1481:

Plut. _Q. R._ 28.

Footnote 1482:

Ambrosch, _Studien_, 199 foll.

Footnote 1483:

It would exactly correspond to the spot of sacred ground on which the
terminus-stone stood between two properties (Rudorff, l. c). In the
latter case, it is worth noting, the sacrifices and sacrificers are
doubles, as with the Salii, Luperci, &c, of the two Roman settlements.
Mr. Granger (_Worship of the Romans_, 163) suggests that this stone
was ‘a relic from the original dwellers by the Tiber,’ i.e. pre-Roman.
But the question is, How did the Romans come to associate it with
Terminus?

Footnote 1484:

_Fasti_, 2. 685 foll. He is probably following Varro and common
opinion, which latter Verrius refers to (Paul. 279) ‘Regifugium sacrum
dicebant, quo die rex Tarquinius fugerit e Roma.’ The word _dicebant_
seems to show that this was not Verrius’ own opinion.

Footnote 1485:

_C. I. L._ i. 289. This gloss is no doubt the equivalent in Festus to
that of Paulus just quoted; but the leading word Regifugium is lost. I
have only quoted so much as is needed for our purpose. For other
completions of the gloss see Müller, _Festus_, l. c, and Huschke,
_Röm. Jahr_, p. 166.

Footnote 1486:

If this gloss really refers to Feb. 24, the presence of the Salii is
difficult to account for, as their period of activity begins in March.
Frazer in an interesting note (_G. B._ ii. 210) suggests that the use
of the Salii was to drive away evil demons; if the Regifugium was a
solemn piaculum, and the victim a scapegoat, this explanation might
serve for Feb. 24.

Footnote 1487:

_Röm. Jahr_, 166 foll.

Footnote 1488:

_L. L._ 6. 31, where Hirschfeld has conjectured ‘litat ad comitium’
for the MS. ‘dicat.’

Footnote 1489:

_Aglaophamus_, 676.

Footnote 1490:

Mannhardt, _Myth. Forsch._ 58 foll.; Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 35
foll.; Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 286 foll. Cp. Lang,
_Myth, Ritual and Religion_, ii. 233 foll. See also Farnell, _Cults of
the Greek States_, i. 88 foll., who agrees in the main with Robertson
Smith.

Footnote 1491:

Frazer, l. c.

Footnote 1492:

Aelian, _N. A._ 12. 34.

Footnote 1493:

_Relig. der Römer_, ii. 35. Cp. Gilbert, i. 343, note. The presence of
the Salii (see above, p. 328), if a fact, would be in favour of this
explanation.

Footnote 1494:

_Röm. Jahr_, 199.

Footnote 1495:

See on Aug. 21 (Consualia).

Footnote 1496:

_Myth. Forsch._ 170 foll.; _Baumkultus_, 382 foll.

Footnote 1497:

This, though with impossible combinations, is what Huschke does (199,
note 53). Feb. 27 is the Roman, March 14 the Quirinal Equirria, in his
view. That the Quirinalia falls in February may perhaps give some
support to the view.

Footnote 1498:

Varro, _L. L._ 6. 13; Fest. 81. See under Oct. 15.

Footnote 1499:

i. 361.

Footnote 1500:

So Ovid, on Feb. 26, writes (2. 853);

Fallimur, an veris praenuntia venit hirundo,
Et metuit ne qua versa recurrat hiems?

This would be early now for central Italy; but Columella, 11. 2, gives
Feb. 23 as the date.

Footnote 1501:

_Fasti_, 2. 857 foll.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the introductory chapter a promise was made that when we had completed the round of the year, we would sum up our results, sketch in outline the history of Roman religious ideas, and estimate the influence of all this elaborate ceremonial on the life and character of the Roman people. This undertaking I must now endeavour to fulfil, though with doubt and diffidence; for even after the most careful examination of the Calendar, both the character and the history of the Roman religious system must still in great degree remain a mystery. With such knowledge however as may have been gleaned in the preceding pages, the reader may be able to appreciate or criticize a few conclusions of a more general character.

The Roman religion has been ably discussed in general terms by several writers of note in the century just closing. Mommsen’s chapters in the early books of his Roman History are familiar to every one. The introduction to Marquardt’s volume on our subject is indispensable; and Preller, less exact perhaps, but more sympathetic and inspiring, still holds the field with the opening chapters of his work on Roman Mythology. To these classical works may be added the section on the Roman religion in the second volume of the _Religionsgeschichte_ of Chantepie de la Saussaye, and the first chapter of Boissier’s work on the Roman religion from Augustus onwards. Professor Granger’s _Worship of the Romans_ also contains here and there some suggestive remarks, though as a rule these are not based upon any elaborate investigation of the cult. Lastly I may mention a small but valuable treatise, published as long ago as 1837 by Leopold Krahner, on the history of the decay of the Roman religion down to the time of Augustus, which fell into my hands many years ago, and is in almost every sentence of value to the student of Roman history.

In all these works the one point insisted on at the outset is this: that the Romans were more interested in the cult of their deities, that is, in the ritual and routine by which they could be rightly and successfully propitiated, than in the character and personality of the deities themselves. This is indeed a truth which has been abundantly borne out in our examination of the Calendar, and might be further illustrated in almost every public act of procedure in the Roman State. Cicero himself expresses it well in the second book of his _De Natura Deorum_ (2. 3. 8) ‘Si conferre volumus nostra cum externis, ceteris rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores reperiemur, religione, id est cultu deorum, multo superiores.’ The second book of his work _De Legibus_ is also an invaluable witness to the conviction, lasting on even in an age of scepticism and indifference among the educated, that the due performance of sacred rites was a necessary function of the State, on which its very existence depended. The Christian Fathers, some of whom, like St. Augustine and Tertullian, were men of learning who had studied the voluminous works of Varro, were well aware of this character; and Tertullian in a curious passage went so far as to suggest that the Devil had here perpetrated an imitation or parody of the minute ritual of Leviticus[1502]. So far as externals go, the comparison he suggested is a useful one; but there is an essential difference in the religious spirit which lay at the root of the two ceremonial systems—a difference that makes it impossible that any work should be written on the Roman religion as inspiring for the student of religious history as _The Religion of the Semites_ so often quoted in these pages.

This elaborate Roman ceremonial consisted in the main of sacrifices of different kinds, conducted with an endless but ordered variety of detail, of prayers, processions, and festivities, the object of which was either to obtain certain practical results, to discover the will of the gods, or to rejoice with the divine inhabitants of the city over the prosperous event of some undertaking. When we survey it in the Calendar as a whole, it seems to fall naturally into three divisions, which correspond with and illustrate the development of the State from its constituent materials. The Calendar contains in fact in a fossilized condition the remains of three different strata of religious or social development.

(1) Here and there we find survivals of what we can only regard as the most primitive condition of human life in ancient Latium: that of men dwelling on forest-clad hill-tops, surrounded by a world of spirits, some of which have taken habitation in, or are in some sort represented by, objects such as trees, animals, or stones. Examples of such objects are the oak of Jupiter Feretrius, the sacred fig-tree of Rumina, the stone of Terminus with its buried sacrifice, and the wolf, the wood-pecker, and spear of Mars. To this earliest stratum may also belong in their ultimate origin those quaint sacrificial or semi-dramatic rites of which we have had examples in the Lupercalia, the Fordicidia, and the Parilia. The casting of the Argei into the Tiber may perhaps also be reckoned here, though connected later on with certain divisions of the developed city of which the meaning and origin are lost to us. This primitive population knew also of charms and spells and omens, not reduced indeed as yet to a definite system, of which the Calendar naturally supplies hardly any indications, while in Ovid and Cato not a few survivals meet us. But the investigation of the oldest culture of central Italy is more especially the province of archaeology, and to the archaeologists, who are now in Italy doing excellent and elaborate work, I must be content to leave it.

(2) We next come conjecturally to clearly-defined evidence of a period in which the ordered processes of agriculture, and the settled life of the farm-house, are the distinctive features. We have the beginnings of a calendar in the observation of the quarters of the moon and their connexion with the deities of light. We have the discipline of the house, represented in the cult of Vesta the hearth-spirit, under the care of the daughters of the family, while the sons as _flamines_ have their special sacrificial duties, the head of the house presiding over all, and having as his own special department the worship of the spirit of the door-way (Janus). The occupations of the family are reflected in the series of festivals which represent the processes and perils of pastoral and agricultural industry: e.g. the Robigalia, Ambarvalia, Vestalia, Consualia, Opiconsivia, Vinalia, Saturnalia, and Terminalia: this last indicating also the idea of property, whether of the community or the individual. We have also clear traces of the union of farms in a group (_pagus_); for the Paganalia still survived in the full-grown city, and both at the Saturnalia and Compitalia the households met together at the winter period of ease and rejoicing.

(3) The further development of social life is also reflected in the annual rites we have been investigating. We see the aggregation of small communities in the Septimontium, in the Fornacalia or feast of the Curiae, possibly also in the ritual of the twenty-four or twenty-seven Sacella Argeorum, round which a procession seems to have gone in March and May. The Parentalia again is the systematized cult of the dead in their own city, outside the walls of the city of the living. The Lares Praestites, worshipped on May 1, are the guardian spirits of the whole community. The Regia, the dwelling of the king, is its political and religious centre, with its sacrarium of Mars, the peculiar deity of the stock, and with the house and hearth of Vesta close by, now grown to be the symbol of the State’s vitality. The Vestals and Flamines have become priests of special worships in an organized state, and at the head of all is the Rex, still specially concerned with the cult of Janus, but representing in his priestly capacity the whole community. The steadily increasing tendency to organize, a tendency rooted in the very fibre of this people, is producing colleges of pontifices and augurs, to assist by associated effort in making sure of the laws of intercourse with the unseen world, and of the best methods of divining its will and intention. And lastly, not only have we found in the festivals traces of the growth and systematization of the life of the city, but in the great Latin festival we have also religious evidence of the early tendency of the cities of Latin blood to combine in some sort with each other.

We have thus reached what has been called by Preller the period of Numa, the king with whose name and personality the Romans always associated the redaction of the Fasti and the state-organization of their religion: a personality so clearly conceived by them as to bear witness at once to its own historical reality, and to their conviction of the vital importance of his work. Before we go further, let us pause here to interrogate the Calendar as to the nature of the divine beings who in these same stages of development were the objects of popular worship. The simplest way to do this will be to present a table showing the list of the most ancient festivals, with the deities concerned in them, so far as they can be identified, in a parallel column:—

_Festivals._ _Deities._

KALENDS JUNO.

IDES JUPITER.

EQUIRRIA MARS.

LIBERALIA LIBER.

FORDICIDIA TELLUS?

CERIALIA CERES.

PARILIA PALE?

ROBIGALIA ROBIGUS.

LEMURIA Ghosts
(unburied).

ARGEORUM SACRA Unknown.

AGONIA VEDIOVIS?

VESTALIA VESTA.

MATRALIA MATER MATUTA.

POPLIFUGIA Unknown.

LUCARIA Unknown.

NEPTUNALIA NEPTUNUS.

FURRINALIA FURRINA?

PORTUNALIA PORTUNUS.

VINALIA JUPITER.

CONSUALIA CONSUS.

VOLCANALIA VOLCANUS.

OPICONSIVIA OPS CONSIVA.

MEDITRINALIA Unknown.

FONTINALIA FONS?

AGONIA Unknown.

CONSUALIA CONSUS.

SATURNALIA SATURNUS.

OPALIA OPS.

DIVALIA ANGERONA?

LARENTALIA LARENTIA?

AGONIA JANUS?

CARMENTALIA. CARMENTA.

LUPERCALIA Unknown.

QUIRINALIA QUIRINUS.

FERALIA BURIED
ANCESTORS.

TERMINALIA TERMINUS.

REGIFUGIUM Unknown.

Here it will be noticed that in those festivals which seem to be survivals from the oldest stratum of civilization (the period of Faunus, as Preller has named it), viz. the Lupercalia, Parilia, Fordicidia, Argeorum Sacra, the deities concerned are either altogether doubtful, or so wanting in clearness and prominence as to be altogether subordinate in interest to the details of the ceremony. The Parilia and Fordicidia were believed in later times to have belonged to Pales and Tellus; but our authority for the grounds of such belief is not strong, and as a matter of fact these two, together with the sacrifice of the October horse, were interconnected by details of antique ceremonial, rather than separately defined by their relation to particular _numina_. In other festivals which may have possibly come down from the oldest period, the deity is almost entirely lost. Here is good evidence of the indistinctness of the Roman conception of the divine; the cult appealed to this people as the practical method of obtaining their desires, but the unseen powers with whom they dealt in this cult were beyond their ken, often unnamed, and only visible in the sense of being seated in, or in some sort symbolized by, tree or stone or animal. They are often multiplex, like the Fauni, Silvani, Lares, Penates, Semones, Carmentes; or they run into each other, like Bona Dea, Maia, Tellus, Ceres, Dea Dia, and others. Only the great deity of the stock stands out at all clearly; Father Mars of the Romans; Father Diovis of the whole Latin race; to these we may perhaps add the Hercules or Genius, and Juno, representing respectively the male and female principles of human life.

In the second and third of the strata which the Calendar offers to the excavator, representing the ordered life of the household and afterwards of the city, we still find much of the same indistinctness. Vesta indeed, the spirit of the hearth-fire, becomes clearly though not personally delineated; so too, but in a less degree, does Janus the spirit of the doorway. Two other groups of spirits also occupy the house; the Lares, who may have been the spirits of dead ancestors duly buried, and the Penates or spirits of the store-chamber; both of them becoming sufficiently clear in the popular conception to be represented by images at a very early period. But in the round of ancient festivals, some at least of the so-called gods, so far as we can guess at their original nature, hardly deserve that name. Liber and Ceres seem to have been originally general names for an ill-defined class of spirits; Robigus is the spirit of the mildew; Consus and Ops are not personalities, but _numina_ protecting the gathered harvest, as Saturnus probably protected the sown seed. The Compitalia was concerned only with the Lares Compitales, spirits of the crossways; in the Paganalia we have but very indistinct information as to the object of worship. The Vinalia, marking a later and more skilled agricultural process, seems on the other hand always to have been clearly connected with Jupiter himself.

Thus in the so-called period of Numa, the period of the earlier monarchy and the first organization of the city-state, the religious life of the community had become highly systematized in respect of the cult, of the priest in charge of it, and the _ius_ which governed all the citizens in their relation to the world of divinities. Of any real change however in the character of these divinities, of any approach to polytheism in the way of an increased individuality of conception, of iconic representation, or definite temple-worship, the Calendar then drawn up supplies no certain evidence. There may indeed have been a tendency towards a clearer definition of _numina_, arising from the very fact of the definite organization of prayer and sacrifice, and of the allotment of cults to particular priesthoods or families. There may, even at that early stage in Roman history, have been an influence at work on the Roman mind, coming from Etruria and Greece, where polytheism found its nourishment in works of art and mythological fancy. These are possibilities of which we must take account, but the Calendar has nothing positive to tell us of them.

It is when we advance to the later monarchy, which we may speak of without hesitation as an Etruscan dynasty, that we find a change beginning, both in the forms and objects of the cult, which marks an epoch in Roman religious history. The oldest Calendar, that of the large letters in the Fasti, tells us of course nothing of this. But in the _additamenta ex fastis_, and in later literary allusions, we have a considerable body of material to help us in following out the character and consequences of this change. It is at this point, or rather at the end of the monarchy, that we begin to hear of the building of real temples, as distinct from luci, sacella, arae, or fana; of the introduction into these of statues of the gods, of the _Graecus ritus_ in sacrifice, and of the appearance of new deities, some of them apparently connected with new elements of population.

This epoch is most clearly marked by the building of the great temple on the Capitol of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, an Etruscan Trias, perhaps ultimately of Greek origin, whose statues, as we have seen, were invited in true polytheistic fashion to partake of a feast every year on the Ides of September, the _dies natalis_ of the temple. This temple was dedicated in B.C. 509, directly after the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus. The next of which we hear is that of the old Roman Saturnus (B.C. 497), now strangely represented by a fettered statue, and worshipped henceforward _Graeco ritu_, with the head uncovered. Next comes Mercurius (B.C. 495), a god unknown to the most ancient Fasti; then Ceres, the Greek Demeter under a familiar Italian name (B.C. 493); next Fortuna with a statue (B.C. 486), an imported goddess, to whom Servius Tullius, if tradition can be trusted, had already erected temples. To this same age belongs probably the temple of Diana on the Aventine, with a Greek ξόανον and the introduction of Apollo-worship as a popular cult. If we follow the catalogue of dedications during the two centuries following the abolition of the monarchy[1503], we find that out of fourteen of which the dates are known to us, six are Greek or Graeco-Etruscan, three more admit before long a non-Roman ritual under the influence of the _duoviri sacris faciundis_, and five are known to have contained statues from an early period. Only three, those of Dius Fidius, of Juno Lucina, and of Mater Matuta, can be said to have been genuine Roman foundations. Without doubt a great change is here indicated which has come over the Roman religion, both in cult and theology. New elements of population, new relations with conquerors or conquered, new commercial enterprise, new experiences of war, famine, and pestilence, bring in new deities, suggest recourse to new divine aids. The old Rome is almost a thing of the past; the cults and deities of the Numan period no longer suffice, and are perhaps already beginning to be forgotten; the oldest priesthoods begin to give place in all except empty externals to the semi-political colleges of pontifices and augurs, and to the important new foundation of _duoviri sacris faciundis_; the old Italian ritual of simple apparatus and detailed ceremony is becoming overshadowed by the showy ceremonial of lectisternia and supplicationes.

Was there no reaction, we may well ask, against a tendency so expansive and denationalizing? I answer this question with hesitation, for so far as I am aware it has never yet been fully investigated. But I am strongly disposed to believe that there was such a reaction in the third century B.C., in the period, that is, between the Samnite wars and Hannibal’s invasion of Italy. This, unlike the preceding century, was a period of almost uniform success of the Roman arms, and one in which the State was at no time in serious peril; and the temptation to have recourse to strange divinities, as a patient betakes himself to new physicians, would not present itself to the minds of the senate or the priesthoods. If we pursue the history of the temple-foundations of this period, under Aust’s invaluable guidance, the result is very remarkable. Between 304 and 217 B.C. we know the dates of twenty-five foundations; and of these no less than twenty are in honour of indigenous, or at least what I may perhaps call, home-made deities. No doubt there is a growing tendency to identify Roman gods with Greek; but this does not show itself plainly till the end of the century, and the only genuine Greek foundation is that of Aesculapius, the consequence of a severe pestilence in 293 B.C. Three or four, e. g. those of Fors Fortuna, Minerva Capta, and Feronia, were probably of non-Roman origin; but they were transplanted from the near neighbourhood of Rome and may almost count as indigenous.

In contemplating the Roman foundations of this period we are struck by certain indications of the activity of the _pontifices_, as distinguished from the _duoviri sacris faciundis_; i. e. the activity of that college of priests whose special charge was the Roman religion proper, and who were only indirectly concerned with foreign introductions. For example, we may note with interest a group of four agricultural deities, to whom temples were dedicated in the eight years between 272 and 264 B.C., the years, that is, of the pacification and settlement of Italy after the invasion of Pyrrhus[1504]. These deities were Consus, Tellus, Pales, and Vortumnus. Owing to the loss of Livy’s second decade we cannot be very certain of the immediate object of these foundations; but we may guess that they had a definite meaning in connexion with the events of the time, and that they were chiefly the work of the pontifical college. Less distinct perhaps, but still worth noticing, is a group of foundations in honour of deities connected with water[1505], i.e. to Tempestates, Juturna and Fons, which seem to have had some reference to the naval operations of the First Punic War. The temple of Juturna was vowed by Lutatius Catulus in the battle at the Aegates Insulae in 241 B.C.; that to the Tempestates by Cornelius Scipio, when the fleet was almost destroyed near Corsica in 259 B.C.; and that of Fons in the Corsican war in 231 B.C. It was characteristic of the Roman mind, and of the pontifical methods, thus to connect the spirits of the springs in Rome with those of the sea and its tempests.

It is at this time also that we notice the appearance of abstractions resolved into deities, such as Salus, Spes, Fides, Honos et Virtus, Concordia, and Mens. These, as I have said elsewhere[1506], are not genuine old Roman cults, but pontifical creations in the spirit of the old Roman impersonal and daemonic ideas of divine agency. In connexion with these I may mention the conviction which has grown upon me in the course of these investigations, that it was in this reactionary period, as we may call it, that the pontifices drew up that extraordinary list of deities, classified according to their functions in relation to man and his activity and suffering, which we know as the _Indigitamenta_. This seems to me characteristic of the period, inasmuch as it was probably based on the old Roman ideas of divine agency, now systematized by something like scientific terminology and ordered classification. It is the old national belief in the ubiquity of the world of spirits, now edited and organized by skilled legal theologians. But it would be beyond the province of this work to venture farther into this tangled question.

From the Hannibalic war to the end of the Republic is the period of the decay and downfall of the old Roman religion. This period need not detain us long; it has been no part of my plan to exhibit this religion on its death-bed, for the Fasti do not admit us to that scene. They show us a living and genuine, not a spurious and enfeebled religious life. A few salient facts shall suffice as illustrations of the slow process of this dissolution.

At the very outset of the period we mark the solemn introduction into Rome of Cybele, the Magna Mater Idaea, and the stone which was supposed to represent her; and we are thus warned that even the Greek cults, with all their adjuncts of art and mythology, are no longer sufficient for Roman needs. The State is once more in peril, and the far-reaching struggle with Hannibal has brought her into touch with new peoples and cults. The Greeks do indeed continue to be the chief invaders of the Roman religious territory, but the religion they bring with them is a debased one. The extraordinary rapidity with which the orgiastic rites of Dionysus spread over Italy in 186 B.C. proves at once that the Italian religious forms were wearing out, and that the Greek substitute was no longer a wholesome one[1507]. From this time forward the lower strata of population show a tendency to run after exciting Oriental forms of worship, which neither the attempted restoration of the old religion by Augustus, nor the subsequent rapid growth of Christianity, could entirely and permanently check. Among the educated classes the old beliefs were being eaten away by the acids of a second-hand philosophy. The Greeks had long begun to inquire into the nature of the gods, and they passed on their disintegrating criticism to their conquerors. Euhemerus, the arch-destroyer of ancient faiths, became known to the Romans through a translation by Ennius at the beginning of the second century B.C.; and it took only another century and a half to produce the sceptical and eclectic treatise of Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_.

Again, nothing is more characteristic of this period than the contempt and neglect into which the old priesthoods gradually fell; Rome now swarmed with a mongrel population that knew little of them and cared less. In the year 209 B.C. even the priesthood of Jupiter was filled by the youthful black sheep of an old patrician family, apparently for no other reason than the hope that so objectionable a character might be reformed by the many quaint restrictions imposed upon the office[1508]. Of the flamines in general, of the Fratres Arvales, Salii, Sodales Titii, and others of the ancient priesthoods we henceforward hear little or nothing until the revival of learning and religion in the Augustan age. Old forms continued to be used, but mainly for political purposes, like the _obnuntiatio_ or observation of lightning; and only those religious offices which had considerable political power continued to be sought after by men of light and leading.

Temples continued to be vowed and built, especially in the earlier part of this period; but their cults are, with few exceptions, of Greek origin, or are new and fanciful forms of old worships, such as the Lares Permarini, Venus Verticordia, Fortuna Equestris, Ops Opifera, Fortuna Huiusce Diei. Before the fall of the Republic a great number of the old temples had fallen almost irretrievably into decay; Augustus tells us in his record of his own reign that he restored no less than eighty-two of them. This too is the period when the identification of Roman gods with Greek became a general fashion; a process which had begun long before, but originally with a genuine meaning and object, not as the sport of a sceptical society educated in Greek speculation. Salus takes the attributes of Hygieia, Mater Matuta becomes Leucothea, Faunus Pan, Sancus Hercules, Carmenta Nicostrate, Neptunus Poseidon, the god of Soracte, Apollo Soranus; and even the greater gods like Mars, Diana, and others assume more and more the likeness and mythical adornment of their supposed Greek equivalents.

The civil troubles of the age of revolution completed the work of disintegration. Men became careless, reckless, self-regarding; the δεισιδαιμονία of which Polybius could say only just before the revolution began, that more than anything else it served to knit the Roman state together, was lost to view in the tumult of political passion and personal greed. Not indeed that it was altogether extinct; that could never be, and never has been the case in Italy. Augustus, who came by degrees to know the people he governed better than any statesman in Italian history, was well aware that to inspire the Roman world once more with confidence, he must bring the religious instinct into play again. The task he thus set himself he accomplished with extraordinary skill and tact; the old religion seemed to live again, the old priesthoods were revived, the old minutiae of worship were restored. He did what he could to bring to life again even the spirit and the principles of the old _religio_; and in the _Carmen Saeculare_ of Horace, written to his order at a moment when he wished to make these things obvious to the eyes of all Romans, we probably have the best succinct exposition of them to be found in Roman literature[1509]. But of the Augustan revival, and of the reasons why it could not be permanent, I must forbear here to speak further.

* * * * *

I have yet to say a few words in answer to the interesting question whether the religious system we have been examining had any appreciable influence on the character of the Roman people: whether it contributed to build up that _virtus_ of the State and the individual which enabled them to subdue and govern the world, as the _pietas_ of Aeneas in the poem armed him for the subjugation and civilization of the wild Italian tribes. The question may at first sight seem a superfluous one, since the religion of a people is rather the expression of its own genius for dealing with the perplexities of human life, than a _vera causa_ in determining its character; yet it is worth asking, for it is unquestionable that the peculiar turn taken by a nation’s religious beliefs and practices does in course of time come to react upon its character and morals.

It has often been said of the Roman religion that it had nothing to do with righteousness, and was without ethical value. The admirable criticism of it given by Mommsen in the first volume of his History may originally have suggested this view; but if so, the copyists have exaggerated the opinion of the master in one particular point, failing to give due weight to the general tenor of his exposition. However this may be, we certainly are now always invited to conclude that this great people, which in its dealings with human beings discovered an extraordinary genius for expansion and adaptation, in its attitude to the supernatural remained cooped up within curiously narrow mental limits, drawing no real sustenance either from its primitive beliefs or its quaint and detailed practice. The current views of this kind have just lately been so well summed up in an admirable English work on the latest age of Roman society and thought, that I cannot do better than borrow a few sentences from it[1510]:—

‘The old Roman theology was a hard, narrow, unexpansive system of
abstraction and personification, which strove to represent in its
Pantheon the phenomena of nature, the relations of man in the State
or in the clan, every act and feeling and incident in the life of
the individual. Unlike the mythologies of Hellas and the East, it
had no native principle of growth, or adaptation to altered needs of
society and the individual imagination. It was also singularly
wanting in awe and mystery. The religious spirit which it cultivated
was formal, timid, and scrupulous.... The old Roman worship was
businesslike and utilitarian. The gods were partners in a contract
with their worshippers, and the ritual was characterized by the hard
and literal formalism of the legal system of Rome. The worshipper
performed his part to the letter with the scrupulous exactness
required in pleadings before the praetor. To allow devotional
feeling to transgress the bounds prescribed by immemorial custom was
“superstitio.”’

It is impossible to deny that there is much truth in all this; yet I may venture to express a doubt whether it contains the whole truth. The fact is that the subject needs a more historical treatment, and perhaps also something of the historical imagination, to do it full justice.

In the earliest periods of Roman civilization, those of the family and the beginnings of the State, the Roman attitude towards the supernatural was, if I am not mistaken, a real contributing cause towards the formation of _virtus_. It was not merely an attitude of business and bargaining. So far as we know it, the common form of address to the gods was not ‘send me what I want—sun, rain, victory, &c., and you shall then have these gifts’; but ‘I give you these sacrifices and expect you to do your part; in taking all this trouble to act correctly by you, I establish a right as against you.’ It is true that in one particular form of dealing with the gods, the vow, or solemn undertaking (_votum_), the transaction wears more the character of a definite bargain; if the god will do certain things, he shall then have his reward. So Cloanthus in Virgil addresses the gods of the sea[1511]—

Di, quibus imperium est pelagi, quorum aequora curro,
Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum
Constituam ante aras, _voti reus_, extaque salsos
Proiciam in fluctus et vina liquentia fundam.

But the _votum_ was the exception, not the rule; it was a promise made by an individual at some critical moment, not the ordered and recurring ritual of the family or the State. It takes its peculiar form simply because the maker of the vow is not at the particular moment in a position to fulfil it. The normal attitude of the Roman in prayer and sacrifice was not this; it is much more exactly expressed in the formula of the farmer’s prayer already quoted in these pages: ‘Father Mars, I pray and beseech thee be willing and propitious to me, my household, and my slaves; for the which object I have caused this threefold sacrifice to be driven round my farm and land.’ This is the usual and natural attitude of all peoples in sacrificing to their gods, and is far from being peculiar to Rome; but it was the nature of the Roman to express it in a more formal and definite way than others, and this led to an outward religion of formulae which has done much to obscure for us, as indeed for the Romans themselves, the real thought underlying them.

These exact formulae of invocation and sacrifice were really the outward expression of a fear of the unknown, and its power to hinder and injure man; for the old Roman did not know his gods intimately, inasmuch as they took no human shape, and did not dwell in buildings made by hands. We have illustrated this ignorance of his again and again, and the vagueness and fluidity of the religious conceptions of the Roman mind. The remedy for this weakness was found, as with the Jews, in a remarkable formularity of ritual, both as regards time, place, and method of worship: in a series of elaborate prescriptions drawn up by experts, going even so far as to anticipate the consequence of an unintentional omission or error by piacular acts. This in time, and under State organization, became a science, and finds its parallel in the science of legal formulae. But there was a difference between the two sciences, even for the Roman. In religious acts, the human mind is dealing with the unseen and unknown, not with human beings who can be calculated with or outwitted. His fear of the unknown was thus for the primitive Roman a wholesome discipline; and his attitude towards it he aptly and characteristically called _religio_, because it _bound_ him to the performance of certain regulated duties, calculated to keep his footsteps straight as he walked daily in this unseen world: duties which even in the family and clan must have been to some extent systematized, and which when the city-state was reached took the definite form of a calendar of public prayers, sacrifices, and festivities.

Now surely in this motive of fear, thus remedied by exact ritual, we may trace a true civilizing element—the idea of Duty, Pietas, which as Cicero defined it, was ‘iustitia erga deos’: righteous dealing towards the gods, in expectation of righteous treatment on their part. And he would be a bold man who should assert that ‘iustitia erga deos’ had no effect in inducing the habit of ‘iustitia erga homines’: in other words that it could not react upon conduct. In the _pietas_ of the one typical Roman in literature both these elements are equally present. The _pietas_ of Aeneas is a sense of duty towards god and man alike; to his father, his son, and his people, as well as to the will of the gods, and to that solemn mission which is at once the religion of his life and the key to the great Roman poem[1512]. This is indeed that same sense of duty and responsibility which governed every Roman in authority in the best days of the State, whether paterfamilias, patronus, priest, or magistrate, and which was the motive power in the working of a constitution which lasted for centuries though only resting on a basis of trust. In this _pietas_, it is true, we find no sense of contrition for sin, no humbling of the individual self before an almighty Governor of the world; but we do find a very sensitive conscientiousness, arising from the dread of neglect or trespass in the discharge of religious observance, in the trust committed by family or State to its constituted representative. And this trust included also the discharge of duties to other men, the neglect of which might bring down the anger of the Unknown, and even compel the surrender of a criminal as _sacer_ to an offended deity. We find abundant evidence of this aspect of the _religio_ in the language of solemn oaths and treaties, and especially in connexion with the cult of the great Jupiter.

I maintain then that in this Roman religion, in spite of its dryness and formality, there was a distinct ethical and civilizing element. And in conclusion I may perhaps raise the question whether it was really, as has been so often asserted, such a conception of the unseen as could never admit of elevation and expansion. A religion, which in its best and simplest forms, could bind men together in the orderly dutiful life of family, gens, state, and federation, could hardly, if left to itself, have speedily become an inanity, even though based on the motive of fear rather than that of brotherly love. But this religion, as the State became more fully matured, came under the influence of two retarding causes. First, its ritual, always obnoxious to formularism, was gradually deprived of its meaning by great priesthoods which from causes which need not be here discussed became powerful political agencies. Secondly, the contact with a mature system of polytheism, adorned and in some sort materialized by art and literature, drew away the mind of the simple and wondering Roman from the task of developing his religious ideas in his own way. When a new world of thought broke on the conquering Roman of the Republic, his own religious motives were already drying up under the influence of a powerful State-organization. His _pietas_ lived on after a fashion for centuries, but more and more it lost that hold on the conscience, that appeal to trust and responsibility, which had once promised it a vigorous life and growth. While foreign gods and cults attracted his attention and admiration, or appealed to his sense that there was no quarter from which supernatural aid might not be called in for the advancement of his State, they failed to bind his conscience with the wholesome motives which lay at the root of his old native _religio_. And neither in the reaction of the fourth century B.C., nor in the protests of an austere Cato in the second, nor in the elaborate revival of Augustus, much less in any later effort of philosopher or autocrat to return to the old ways, was any permanent resuscitation of discipline or conduct possible. The problem of giving a real religion to the world-state into which the Roman dominion had then grown, was not to be solved either by Roman _pietas_ or Hellenic polytheism.

Footnote 1502:

Tertullian, _de Praescriptionibus Haereticorum_, 40.

Footnote 1503:

Collected by Aust in his work _de Aedibus sacris_, pp. 4 foll.

Footnote 1504:

Aust, op. cit., p. 14, note 1.

Footnote 1505:

Above, p. 190.

Footnote 1506:

Aust, op. cit., p. 15, note 1.

Footnote 1507:

See especially the speech of the consul Postumius in Livy 39. 15.

Footnote 1508:

See a paper by the author in _Classical Review_, vol. vii. p. 193
foll.

Footnote 1509:

Note for example the way in which Horace has contrived to introduce in
combination the ideas of the fertility of crops and herbs, of marriage
and the increase of population, of public morality and prosperity.

Footnote 1510:

It gives me pleasure to quote this passage from _Roman Society in the
last century of the Western Empire_ (p. 63) by my old friend Professor
Dill.

Footnote 1511:

_Aen._ 5. 235.

Footnote 1512:

See Nettleship, _Essays in Latin Literature_, pp. 103, 104.

NOTES ON TWO COINS.

A. Denarius of P. Licinius Stolo (p. 42).

_Obv._ AVGVSTVS TR POT Augustus, laureate, on horse-back to r.

_Rev._ P. STOLO Helmet (apex) between two shields.

IIIVIR

The forms of the helmet and shields are very archaic and interesting, appearing to point to a very early period. The helmet bears a marked likeness to that worn on Egyptian monuments by the Shardana, one of the races that invaded Egypt about the thirteenth century B.C. The shield seems to consist of two small round bosses connected by an oval boss. It is strikingly like the Mycenaean shield as shown on a number of monuments, and far earlier than the so-called Boeotian shield which was common in Greece from the sixth century onwards. The Roman writers themselves seem to have been puzzled by this shape (Marindin, article ‘Salii’ in Smith’s _Dict. Antiq._), and there can be little doubt that it came down from a time when the ‘Mycenaean’ civilization was common to Greece and Italy.

The figure on the coins of M. Sanquinius (Babelon, _Mon. de la Répub. Rom._ ii. 417), who wears a horned helmet and long tunic and carries a herald’s staff and round shield, has been identified by several authorities as one of the Salii. This, however, is certainly wrong. Both on this coin, and later coins of Domitian, the personage is closely connected with the Ludi Saeculares. Dr. Dressel, in the _Ephem. Epigr._ viii. 314, maintains him to be a herald proclaiming the festival. This would admirably suit the caduceus; but the decorations of the helmet seem to me to be not plumes, as Dr. Dressel thinks, but horns, like those on the headpiece of Juno Lanuvina. In any case the person is no Salius.

B. DENARIUS OF L. CAESIUS (p. 101).

_Obv._ Youthful bust l., hair disordered, striking with thunderbolt. Behind, a monogram.

_Rev._ L. CAESI Two young male figures seated to r. Each has drapery wrapped round waist, and grasps a spear. Between them, a dog, which one of them caresses. In field, in monograms, LARE Above, head of Vulcan and pinchers (moneyer’s mark). The monogram of the obverse was read by Mommsen AP for Apollo; but the closed P was not at that time in use: the interpretation of Montagu (_Numismatic Chronicle_, 1895, p. 162) as Roma is therefore to be preferred. The head appears to be that of Vedius or Vejovis, whose statue at Rome carried in the hand a sheaf of arrows, which would naturally be confused with the Greek thunderbolt. Other heads of Vejovis on Roman coins, as those of the Gens Fonteia, are more Apolline in type, with long curls and laurel-wreath.

The two seated figures of the reverse are identified by the inscription as Lares. They are clearly assimilated to the Greek Dioscuri, early adopted at Rome. The dog, however, which sits between them is an attribute properly belonging to them. Dr. Wissowa in Roscher’s _Lexicon_ (p. 1872) says that they are clad in dogs’ skins; this, however, is certainly not the case, an ordinary cloak or chlamys falls over their knees.

This representation of the Lares stands by itself, the deities are frequently represented in later art, especially wall-paintings and bronze statuettes, but their type is that of boys who hold cornucopiae or drinking vessel, and are fully clad.

P. G.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Acca Larentia, 74, 93, 275, 276, 324.

Aedes Herculis: _see_ Forum Boarium.

Aedes Vestae: _see_ Vesta.

Aediles, plebeian, 75, 76, 92.

Aesculapius, 105, 191, 278;
connexion with Vediovis, 122, 278;
temple, 278, 340.

Agonia: December, 265, 281;
January, 277, 280-2;
March, 54, 281;
May, 121, 281.

Agonus (or Agonalis), 323.

Agriculture: festivals, 3, 71, 79-82, 85-8, 88-91, 113-4, 124-8,
145-54, 204-6, 206-9, 212-4, 256-8, 268-73, 324-7, 335.

Alban Mount: Feriae Latinae held at, 95, 97, 227-8;
temple of Jupiter Latiaris, 95-6, 228.

Ambarvalia, 114, 124-8, 154.

Ancilia, 38-9, 41-3, 45-6, 250;
lustration, 57-9, 248, 250;
moving, 39, 41, 43-4, 115

Ancillarum Feriae, 176-8.

Angerona, 274-5;
goddess of Divalia, 274, 336.

Anna Perenna: festival, 44, 50-1, 53, 163;
legends, 51-4, 60;
popularity with lower classes, 44, 50-1;
representative of year, 52-3.

Aphrodite: connexion with Venus, 69, 86.

Aplu, 181.

Apollo, 89, 191, 250;
comparison with Mars, 39-40;
connexion with Aesculapius, 278;
with Vediovis, 122, 181, 225, 278;
coupled with Latona, 181, 186, 200;
festivals, 173, 179-81;
functions, 180, 278;
Medicus, 180;
restoration of worship by Augustus, 180 (n. 4), 181-2;
Soranus, 84, 181;
temples, 180, 182;
worship, 117, 179-82, 339.

April: character, 6, 9, 33, 66-7;
connexion with Venus, 67, 69;
festivals, 66-97;
origin of name, 6, 33, 66;
prevalence of female deities, 67.

Ara Maxima: _see_ Circus Maximus.

Argei: _see also_ Sacella Argeorum, 150, 151;
explanations of custom, 114, 116-20;
mourning of Flaminica Dialis, 112, 115, 119, 151;
origin of name, 112-3; 118-9;
puppets thrown into Tiber, 52, 57, 100, 111-20;
substitution for human victims, 112, 115, 116-7, 119.

Armilustrium, 45, 58, 249, 250-1.

Army: importance of curiae, 303, 305;
mustering, 133.

Artemis, 200.

Asylum, 122, 183 (n. 3), 327;
connexion with Vediovis, 122.

Attalus, King of Pergamus, 69.

August: character, 189-90;
festivals, 189-214.

Augustus, revival of religion, 19, 181-2, 190, 280, 342, 343-4, 349.

Aventine: plebeian quarter, 75-6, 199;
temples, 59, 74-6, 101-5, 158, 198-200, 201, 206, 232, 267, 339.

Beans: harvest, 130, 255;
use as food, 132-3;
use in ritual, 83, 109-10, 131;
religious character, 91, 110, 130-1.

Beating bounds, _see_ Lustrations;
productive of fertility, 104, 178-9, 262, 302, 311, 315, 318-21.

Bellona, 134-5.

Birds: used in augury, 139-40.

Bona Dea, 95;
connexion with Damia, 105-6;
with Maia, 99, 100, 123, 210;
earth goddess, 71, 103, 104, 106;
functions, 104-5, 106;
men excluded from worship, 102-3, 142, 256;
myrtle not allowed in temple, 103-4;
temple, 101-5;
women’s sacrifice, 255-6;
worship, 102-6, 150.

Bouphonia, 176, 329.

Brutus, M. Junius, 130.

Caesar (Julius): birthday, 174;
calendar, 4, 5-6, 11, 14-5.

Cakes: _see also_ Salt-cake;
heads of animals decked with, 148, 242, 244;
sacrifices, 53-5, 155, 161, 295, 304.

Calendar: _see also_ Year, 248-50;
authorities on, 13-4, 16-9;
divergences, 36, 45, 241, 265-6;
Julian: _see_ Caesar;
marks of days, 8-10;
republican, 14-20;
secrecy, 8-9, 11;
surviving, 5-6, 11-4.

Campus Martius, 247-8;
festivals, 50-1;
races, 44-5, 208, 242, 249, 330;
sacrifice of October-horse, 241-3, 247-9.

Capitolium, 129-30, 327;
connexion with Saturnus, 269-70;
temples, 43, 85, 129-30, 145, 157-8, 214, 216-7, 229, 291, 293,
326-7.

Caprotinae, Nonae: _see_ Nones.

Cardea: confusion with Carna, 131-2.

Caristia, 308-9.

Carmenta, 167, 291-3;
festival, 277, 290-3;
temple, 291, 293.

Carmentalia, 15, 277, 290-3.

Carmentes: _see_ Carmenta.

Carna, 130;
confusion with Cardea, 131-2;
festival, 130-3.

Castor and Pollux: _see_ Dioscuri.

Cerealia, 15, 72-3, 77-9, 92;
foxes loosed in Circus Maximus, 77-9, 94;
plebeian character, 70, 77, 92.

Ceres, 73-4, 295, 338;
connexion with Demeter, 73, 74, 181;
with plebeians, 74-7, 92;
festival, 72-3, 77-9, 92, 294-6;
goddess of crops, 67, 71, 73, 126;
Greek influence on, 73, 75-6, 105;
sacrifices, 103, 105, 295;
temple, 74-6, 92.

Cernunnos: identification with Janus, 286.

Character of Romans, 65;
influence of religion on, 344-9.

Charlton-on-Otmoor: lustration of fields, 128, 246.

Circus Flaminius: games, 217, 252, 253;
temples, 134, 135, 180, 202, 211.